Subjects
To effectively evaluate CBR in CHCs, we selected Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, in southwest China with a land area of 12,390km2 and a population of 16.33 million by 2018(10, 11). This city is the economic and cultural center of western China, and about 34.49% of the population dwell in rural areas.
And we conducted a general cross-sectional survey of all 390 primary health centers in Chengdu. To reduce the uncertainty caused by the large variety of education levels of patients, the survey questionnaire was undertaken by lead physicians in these community health facilities from October 2016 to November 2016. At the same time, data about these community health facilities was obtained from the Health Commission of the Sichuan Province to verify survey results. In this way, we expected to receive as accurate and objective data as we could.
There are 34522 CHCs and 36871 THCs in mainland China by Sep, 2015(12). Even though the Chinese government has devoted significant resources in building primary health centers in recent years, rehabilitation services and personnel are still largely in need. In the next 10 years, it is estimated that China required 60000 rehabilitation physicians, 150000 rehabilitation therapists and 60000 nurses to meet the demand(13). By the end of 2010, China had more than 85 million disabled persons, according to the census(14). But until 2018, there were only 9036 professional rehabilitation institutions and about 250,000 staff in these institutions, including physicians, nurses and administrative(15), which indicated that most of the disabled persons in mainland China could not get easy access to rehabilitation service. On the patients’ side, they prefer to go to hospitals rather than primary health care centers for what they believe in having more professional service(16). Consequently, the Chinese government initiated the “Healthy China 2030” plan, in which service capacity and scale of primary health care system was set as a focused point to invest(17).
In summary, there are two critical directions for China to enhance CBR: the first is to improve the scale of CBR service in primary health centers; the second is to improve service quality to attract patients instead of sending them to superior hospitals. To evaluate priamry health centers from these two aspects, we selected data of the number of patients (person-time) in 2015 as a proxy of CBR service capacity. Since this number could directly reflect the size and volume of CBR service. On the other hand, the larger this number was, the more patients the primary health center attracted, which indicated the higher quality of CBR service.
Development of the questionnaire
The questionnaire was designed according to the policy of <Service quality evaluation guideline for primary care facilities>(18), made by the National health and family planning commission of the people’s republic of China in 2016, and modified after consideration of applicability as well as expert judgment. We focused on evaluating the basic capabilities of primary care facilities in providing services Thus we mainly collected the following variables:
- Total number of rehabilitation patients of each primary health facilities in 2015
- Total number of disabilities in the area under the jurisdiction of each primary health facilities in 2015
- Categories of rehabilitation diseases
- Basic conditions: served population, area of the structure, the total number of rehabilitation physicians, physical therapy equipment, cervical and lumbar traction equipment, infrared therapy apparatus, ultrasound therapy apparatus, number of rehabilitation bed, number of therapeutic rehabilitation room.
- Rehabilitation training: rehabilitation lecture, rehabilitation counseling.
- Rehabilitation management measures: rehabilitation training plan, rehabilitation-related system, self-inspection.
The questionnaire is available in additional file 1.
Administration of the questionnaire
An instruction for data quality control was developed for the questionnaire and then distributed by local health bureaus to the leaders of each primary health center. 390 lead physicians completed the questionnaires independently and submitted them to the survey team in 2 weeks after receiving them. Then the survey team staff rechecked the collected questionnaires and filled the missing data by interviewing leaders of primary health centers through telephone. At last, the team randomly sent staff to 5% of the CHC facilities to validate data received.
Data analysis
Up to now, qualitative methodologies have dominated the field of evaluations in community-based rehabilitation, but quantitative methods have demonstrated strong potential in capture a better assessment(19). Therefore, quantitative data analysis was adopted in our cross-sectional survey. Data were logged into Epidata by dual investigators and analyzed with SPSS 22.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA)
Multivariable ordinal logistic regression analysis was used to determine which specific characteristics were independently related to the number of patients per year in CHCs and THCs—among the number of diseases, rehabilitation diseases, area of the structure, rehabilitation equipment, rehabilitation management measures, etc. All significant tests were 2-tailed, and those with a P-value <0.05 were considered statistically significant.